Are You Ready
by Zaise
Summary: Duo goes soul searching at Heero's slight expense.


ARE YOU READY  
by Laisia Laurant  
  
*****  
Hey, Mr. Seeker  
Hold on to this advice  
If you keep seeking you will find  
******  
  
Just what was he looking for?  
  
He just always kept looking for... something. His extents of searching had gone out into many branches. First it had been the extended silence, a direct contrast to his normal chatter. Then it had been the singing; the writing of songs, tinkering on the old piano, scrawling notes and words down on scrap pieces of paper. He soon realized, though, that he wasn't all that much of a songwriter. So he turned to art.  
  
His artwork was decidedly beautiful. It came from somewhere deep within him, flowing out through his hand onto the paper. Sometimes it seemed that it wasn't even him who was drawing, but it was someone drawing with his hand. Yet even the art didn't work.  
  
Then came the strangest, but certainly not unpleasant, stage of his exploration into the kinky possibilities that came with sex. I woke up one morning, and there he was, dressed in sparse black leather, twirling a pair of handcuffs around a single finger. Yes, that was certainly an... interesting... stage. But that, too, passed after a time.  
  
I think he's running out of ideas. I would help him, if only... if only I knew what he's seeking. He won't tell me, so I don't press it. But I believe that someday, if he keeps looking, he will find whatever he's looking for. So I give him space to seek.  
  
*****  
Don't want to follow  
Down roads been walked before  
It's so hard to find unopened doors  
Are you ready? Are you ready?  
*****  
  
"Duo?" I needed his attention.  
  
His attention was what I got. "Yeah?"  
  
A deep breath. "Why won't you tell me?"  
  
"Tell you what?" Dripping with fake innocence.  
  
Does he think I'm stupid? "..."  
  
"I--" A pause. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood... and sorry I could not travel both, and be one traveller, long I stood... and looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth."  
  
I realized that I had forgotten to breathe. "What are you--" No. "Who wrote that?"  
  
He didn't hear me. "Then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear; though as for that, the passing there had worn them really about the same..." He stopped.  
  
It felt achingly unfinished, though I'd never heard it before. "Is there... is there more?"  
  
He nodded. "Yeah." Slender fingers clenched the bed sheets in a death grip.  
  
My gaze met his, and my eyes asked a question: Why?  
  
"Because," he said sadly. "Just because."  
  
*****  
Hey, Mr. Hero  
Walking a thin, fine line  
Under the microscope of life  
*****  
  
I remember a day, a long time ago. Well, maybe a year isn't a long time, but it seems like a long time ago. He and I were in town, and he was being his usual masked self; loud, obnoxious, cheerful, and flirtatious.  
  
"Duo," I had hissed. "You're making a spectacle out of yourself."  
  
He had turned to me and grinned. "Hee-chan," he'd whispered back, "if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room!"  
  
Those words have stayed with me. Maybe I don't exactly live by them, though I wouldn't really describe myself as the most off-the-edge person. But I remember them nonetheless, just as I remember that day as clearly as that awkward day when he and I first met at the docks.  
  
*****  
Remember your roots, my friend  
They're right down below  
'Cause heroes come and heroes go  
*****  
  
If there's a rule, he seems determined to break it. I once said to him, "Duo, the rules apply to you, too. Since when are you an exception?"  
  
He'd immediately fallen quiet, and had stared at his shoes. "Since I met you..."  
  
I had blinked, and bitten my lip. "And before?"  
  
"The street," he'd said bitterly, glaring into an invisible void beneath the carpet. "The laws never applied. The rules of survival? Mandatory..."  
  
*****  
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one  
Count down to the change in life that's soon to come  
Your life has just begun   
*****  
  
I stood in the kitchen, tossing the vegetables in the pan absently. I heard a rustle behind me, but didn't turn around. Instinct and years of his presence told me it was Duo.  
  
"And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted if I should ever come back."  
  
My breath caught in my throat, and my hand froze. Was that the poem from months before? Was he going to finish it?  
  
"I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference."  
  
The melancholy, soft tone of his voice, combined with the impact of his words, left me shellshocked. "Is that... the end?"  
  
I could FEEL him smiling, though I still didn't turn around. "Robert Frost," he said softly, staring through the back of my skull. "And as Tolkien wrote, roads go ever, ever on..."  
  
I didn't know who Frost or Tolkien was, but whoever they were, they were obviously writers of some sort.  
  
"Thank you, Hee-chan, for giving me space... for loving me..." A choke. "For not leaving me behind."  
  
I flinched at that. "Leave you behind? Why would -- how could you think that?" I didn't really expect an answer. There wasn't an answer.  
  
He paused, and said with a laugh, "The vegetables are burning, koi."  
  
  
OWARI  
  



End file.
